I'm sure it's happened to you: you open a session with Claude and it feels like you're starting from scratch, having to explain over and over again what you do or how you prefer your texts to be written. It's the eternal struggle against context resetting, that feeling that the AI ​​has a goldfish memory and forces you to repeat instructions you'd already made clear in previous chats.
To solve this problem, Anthropic has deployed an ecosystem where Projects, Skills, and Plugins work together to transform the assistant into a collaborator who truly understands you. It's not just about saving notes, but about creating a persistent digital brain that understands your business, respects your style, and knows exactly which tools to use without you having to provide the instruction manual in every message.
Mastering Claude's Projects
Imagine a Project as a workspace where Claude never forgets anything. Unlike a conventional chat, here you have long-term memory thanks to system instructions and knowledge files. Technically, it's as if you inject a master file, similar to a CLAUDE.md , which the model reads before uttering the first word.
When you set up a project, you can upload technical documentation, brand guidelines , or anonymized databases. This is a game-changer: you no longer have a generic assistant, but an expert in your field who maintains impeccable tone consistency and drastically reduces the need for complex prompts, as they understand what you mean when you mention internal company concepts.
The Power of Skills: Automated Procedures
If Projects define personality and context, Skills are the instruction manuals for specific tasks. A Skill is basically a set of detailed steps that Claude always executes in the same way. Instead of asking him to "write a blog post" and hoping he gets it right, a writing Skill requires him to follow a specific SEO structure , use certain keywords, and adhere to a set length.
For those who don't want to deal with technical files, there's a meta-skill called skill-creator . This tool allows Claude himself to design other skills through a conversation; you explain the result you're looking for, and he generates the necessary file, which you then simply upload to the skills settings panel to activate it.
Plugins and Connectivity: Beyond Chat
It's common to confuse Skills with Plugins, but the difference is fundamental. While a Skill is "knowing how to do something," a Plugin is "being able to access something ." Plugins connect Claude to the outside world through MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, allowing him to interact with Notion, Slack, Google Drive, or GitHub.
A clear example is that a Skill can teach Claude how to write the perfect Slack message, but the Plugin is what gives him the actual permission to send that message or read a specific channel. This combination of intelligence and connectivity is what allows us to move from a simple chat to the automation of real workflows .
Claude Code and Cowork: The next level of autonomy
For more technical users, Claude Code is the crown jewel. It operates from the command line and manages configuration at four levels: user (global preferences), project (team rules), local (personal settings not uploaded to the repository), and managed. The use of symbolic links is a masterstroke here, as it allows you to update a Skill in a central folder and have the change applied to all linked projects.
On the other hand, Claude Cowork is the desktop version that doesn't require any programming knowledge. Its approach is agentic: you give it a goal, and it creates an execution plan . It can read local invoices, organize spreadsheets, or even schedule recurring tasks , such as processing reports every Friday at a fixed time, using the Chrome extension to browse the web autonomously.
Configuration structure and resources
To maintain order, it's vital to organize the files. In the code environment, the CLAUDE.md file acts as the project's compass, while the Skills reside in separate folders with their own SKILL.md file . There are already communities that share massive libraries, ranging from OWASP security and code debugging skills to scientific tools for bioinformatics or personal genome analysis.
The versatility is astounding: you can set up a customer support project with a CRM plugin , a sales management system with access to Google Drive, or a content creation workflow that goes from an idea to a downloadable EPUB file in minutes. All of this is complemented by Artifacts , which allow you to view interactive applications and documents in real time.
The integration of these layers transforms AI into a complete productivity platform where context persistence, process standardization through skills, and Cowork's agentic execution capabilities eliminate repetitive tasks and allow for the delegation of complex workflows with complete confidence.